The role of cryptocurrencies was thrust into the spotlight during a hearing between Congress and the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The US House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations held a hearing with the Wall Street regulator on April 26, and they explored regulating …Google Alert – bitcoin

An opposition letter to S.1241 has been developed by the Bitcoin Foundation, but I don't think it goes far enough. I think any organizational opposition letter (e.g. from EFF, Bitcoin Foundation, or other org) should call for total and absolute death by fire of S.1241 or anything like it. (See second season of Stranger Things if you have any question about what I mean about death by fire.) https://bitcoinfoundation.org/redraft-%c2%a71241-combating-money-laundering-act-2017/

(The following is my recent letter over the weekend sent to the U.S. Administration regarding S.1241, requesting that a position be taken on the bill to announce that a veto would be provided if the legislation were to be advanced. Please feel free to copy and paste from it or develop your own.)

This proposal is a sick joke. Its proponents have given a fancy name to something that simply put, is designed to attack the American worker and would do absolutely zero in relation to what the title implies.

The bill would brings cryptocurrencies under the umbrella of civil forfeiture. It also would require the DHS to provide, within 18 months of ratification, a report on strategies to detect cryptocurrencies at border crossings, which would be impossible since there is no technology that can do that.

I can put a bitcoin on a paper wallet or memorize seed words in my brain that represent a whole wallet and cross borders physically or virtually, then later reproducing the wallet at will. This law would attempt to prohibit me from exercising my memory to access my resources across borders, a ridiculous approach to finance. Finance is of course cross-border and private.

Section 13 of the proposed Act is just one particularly vicious aspect of it, constituting nothing less than an attack upon the American worker.

Sec. 13 of S.1241 seeks to define anyone issuing, redeeming, or cashing bitcoin as a financial institution, requiring them to comply with the Bank Secrecy Act, 31 U.S.C. §5312 and requiring INDIVIDUALS AND SMALL BUSINESSES to adopt the same formal reporting procedures as financial institutions for the purpose of reporting suspicious financial transactions.

In effect this Act would treat INDIVIDUALS as though they were BANKS and impose the same financial licensing and reporting obligations on them.

Please communicate to those who are pushing S.1241 forward that it will get nothing but a Veto.